(Revised 10/5 am) One of the most bizarre aspects about what we're going through as a nation now is how little our sense of normalcy has been affected by what is happening. Sure, people are worried about this and that, but people are always
worried about this and that. Nothing in any deeply felt way is
different. It's as if we simply don't have the imagination to grasp the significance.
Until we are actually experiencing something cinematically apocalyptic, it's easy to assume that nothing much has really changed–because it hasn't. Kids go to school every morning, and most of their parents go to work. People watch their favorite TV shows. The baseball playoffs go on, and and so do college and pro football. Cars are on the streets. People are in the parks. There's such a profound disconnect between what's happening and our experience of it. It's dizzying. We are egregiously disconnected from the reality of what's happening; we're all having the experience but missing the meaning.
When we think about previous political or social apocalyptic events–the American Revolution, the French and Russian revolutions, the crash of the economy after 1929, the ascent of the Nazi party in Germany–we look back upon them and see only the most dramatic, cinematic moments. Do you not think that life, for the most part, went on as usual in the weeks and days leading up to these high-profile cinematic moments? Do you think most people really expected things to be changed significantly in the way that subsequently they were?
We don't see now in our imaginations the incremental series of events that led to the big, game-changing moment, and 99% of people contemporary with the run up to these moments wouldn't have seen or understood them either. Because those incremental events occurred mostly out of sight or, like our hearing about the way reporters were treated during the GOP convention in St. Paul, we hear about what's happening, but then shrug our shoulders and say, "So? If Brian Williams and Wolf Blitzer aren't making a big deal about it, why should I?" And do you think the St. Paul police understoodd what they were doing, what they were participating in? They just saw themselves as doing their job.
Do you think that even the people whom we now see has the architects of those epochal historical events understood the significance of what they were involved in? Did the younger Robespierre envision the Terror? Did the German generals who supported Hitler foresee the holocaust. If you told them beforehand that's where things were headed, would they have believed you? These huge events are the cumulative effect of so many individuals who in the pursuit of their own small goals and plans just react to events, and in the choices they make, they either abet or resist this larger movement of history.
No, not even the people to whom we look now as the architects of these events, could have predicted that things would have happened the way they eventually did. If you're in the middle of it, you're as clueless as to what anything means as the people who are peripheral to it. You might think you understand because you're involved and you impose your own meanings on events, but you don't, really. You come to think that you do because others give you authority and credibility because they need someone to fill that role. But, while some in retrospect might be perceived to have understood better than others, in the moment, those are the ones who have least credibility. And it's just that their guesses turned out to be correct. Because nobody can do more than guess. But some guesses are better informed and wiser than others.
I don't know if we are in the middle of a world historical apocalyptic event right now, but that's the point I'm trying to make. If this was France in 1788, or Boston in 1772 or Germany in 1932, we wouldn't have known then either. For most people life would have seemed normal–it's only later when the storm breaks that you realize that this time things are different.
What we have been going through in this country since 11/7/2000 is deeply, deeply disturbing. It's not any one event–it's the pattern formed by a series of events. A lot of what has gone on is the same old, same old if you take any one thing in isolation. But given what we know about, which for sure is only half of it, looked at cumulatively is astonishing. And I've been trying to figure out why more people aren't alarmed about it. And the only thing that explains it is that until we have the cinematic moment, it's not real. We have a lot of information, but have not found a way to shape it all into a meaningful pattern about which there is a consensus. Everything seems conjectural, so let's not worry about it too much. We've got our own personal problems to deal with.
I'm not sure electing Obama is going to make a difference. But I think there's an outside chance that he might be the kind of personality who could rise to the occasion if an apocalyptic storm were to break. American history has a funny way of promoting the best people to be in positions of authority when we most need them. It happened at the founding; it happened during the Civil War, and it happened during the Great Depression and World War II period. Nothing leadership did was perfect, but they found a way to move us forward to the next stage.
These people were not without significant flaws, and they are not necessarily people who seemed all that impressive before they were rose to the challenges that confronted them. Obama might be such a leader. Might be. He already has disappointed, and he will disappoint again. But he might be another one of these American figures who emerges when we most need them.
I'm not a great advocate of Pascal's Wager when it comes to theological questions of belief and disbelief, but I do think that one's beliefs open up or close off possibilities: why choose to continue on a certain path of destrtruction if instead you can choose hope, even if it is uncertain. His stands on the issues is not really tht important. What matters more lies in that with Obama, at least, there is an opening to something larger than more of the same, and with him the worst you can get is what you'd get anyway with the other guy.
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